Tuesday, 15 April 2014

Honoka has finally been persuaded to take the helm of μ's in the all-new Love Live, but there's already another crisis to be dealt with!

The issue in question is that this new-look contest is insisting that only new songs are allowed in the competition, so any previously aired or performed tracks are out of the window (goodness knows what this will mean for A-RISE, who only seem to have one song in the first place). With this in mind, there's only one thing for it... it's time for the group to decamp to one of Maki's many homes to get the creative juices flowing. Aside from some early disasters (leaving Honoka on the train, an unintended dip in a lake for Nico and Rin), the real issue is some serious mental blocks for the main creative team within the group.

In light of this, those three creators - Maki for music, Umi for lyrics and Kotori for costumes - split themselves into larger groups in the search for motivation. Although it initially looks unlikely to help, it's the interactions between the girls in these groups that ultimately bear fruit, moving μ's just that little bit closer to the prospect of Love Live success.

After a decent enough start, this week's Love Live proved to be a good distillation of what works about the show - watching its now well-established cast of characters bouncing off of one another is fun, there were some well-place moments of laugh out loud humour early on, and its sweet moments never crossed the line into the overly saccharine. The result is a simple, colourful and energetic bundle of fun, which is pretty much exactly what most come to a series like this for - a case of mission accomplished on this occasion, without a doubt.